My husband and I recently visited Maldives for our first wedding anniversary. Here's everything I want to share about our trip.

We travelled from Bangalore to Trivandrum to Maldives. It's actually just a 45 mins flight from Trivandrum. 

Arrival is at Ibrahim Nasir International Airport. After immigration formalities, you can see a bunch of counters with resort names on them. You can head to the respective counter and enquire about your hotel drop. Resorts usually arrange a ferry or flight depending on the distance. 
There is nothing much you can do on this island. But Male (the capital of Maldives) is a 10 minute ferry ride from the airport and it costs $1 to reach there. If you have more than 2 hours waiting time for the hotel transfer, you should definitely visit the capital island. It is almost impossible to visit local islands once you check-in to your resort. Local ferries do not operate to the private resort islands.

We took a domestic flight to Mamigili airport and then a private ferry to Sun Island Resort & Spa. The resort is located at a beautiful island which is about 1.3 km long and 500 m wide. The ambience was good and infrastructure well maintained. The island resort is a totally different world compared to Male. It's not so crowded, not conservative about clothing. Women in Bikini is quite common in the resort whereas it is a strict no-no in Male(or any other non-resort islands).

Sun Island

We had opted for the standard beach bungalow with a Bed & Breakfast(BB) package. The room was beautiful and stocked up with the regular hotel complimentary stuff (coffee, water, toiletries, hair dryer). The beach at the door step is lovely turquoise colour, calm with no waves, not so deep, good place to swim & float. We saw some beautiful fishes(includes some small sharks) there.

View from our room

Everything is expensive at the resort. 1.5 litre of water costs $5. And so is the food. As we had the BB package, we would eat a heavy breakfast, skip lunch and have dinner(under $20 for 2). Dinner buffet is $38 per person. But you have A la carte options as well. 

There are lot of activities that could be arranged through the resort (Fishing, diving, parasailing, scuba diving) at an additional cost. Fishing includes free BBQ of the fishes that you get. 

Snorkelling is not very expensive. You can rent a snorkel kit for $10 a day and swim around in the resort. You get to see a variety of colourful beautiful fishes & reefs. Sting rays, Manta rays, Eagle rays are easy to spot there.

Some attendants in the reception were rude, especially towards Indians. Its weird given most of the workers there are from India or Bangladesh. 

Some people are so nice that they deserve to be mentioned in this post.
I had just mentioned about my wedding anniversary to the room boy. He arranged some flowers and decorated the bed. It was a really sweet gesture. 

Indian chefs and waiters are really nice compared to the attendants at the reception. At Al Pontile, Italian restaurant, the waiter was a Malayalee. He noticed how we carefully picked the least expensive pizza every time. On our last day at the resort, he offered us free water (that’s rare) which we didn’t take. So, he prepared delicious coffee for us for free.



Overall, it was a peaceful vacation with a lot of snorkelling, cycling around in the tiny island, fishing, sleeping on the beach. If you are looking for a pleasant vacation with your partner and looking for a mix of activities and chilling out, I would highly recommend this resort.

Budget for two: $2000 ~ 2500 for 4 days (varies based on meal plans & activities)
Last friday, I boarded the Kochuveli Express(to Thrissur) at KR puram, where the train stops just for 2 minutes. I was waiting at the spot where our compartment was expected to arrive. So did 100 other people. And another 100 people on the other side of the railway track. All 200 people rushed into the same reserved compartment which could only accommodate 72 people, which already had 200 people inside. After successfully boarding and battling my way to the seat number, we found some people sitting comfortable on our seats. They decided to "generously" give us some space to sit after some time.
S12 - Kochuveli Express
The additional people in the compartment were travelling to either Bangarpet or Kuppam which are the next two stations (around 1.5 hrs from KR puram). Is it OK to travel with no/open ticket in reserved compartment?

Why did the TTE not visit our compartment to check the tickets? I'm sure he knows that the train is always crowded till Kuppam. May be, he was not able to board the train!
Why did the railway police not block people board the train from the other side of the track?

When there are so many people travelling to Kuppam and Bangarpet from Bangalore, how many local trains operate to these towns?!
Disclaimer: It is just my personal opinion about religion. 

I have always wondered how religions originated. And why heroes from holy books are worshipped.

Who is Jesus?
Some say that he is a man who lived 2015 years ago. He was a kind hearted person. He forgave his enemies and sacrificed his life for his fellow human beings. Read The Holy Bible for more info.

Who is Ram? 
He was the reincarnation of Lord Vishnu. He was a good man, who loved his family. Oh, he is the hero of another famous book, The Ramayana. 

Why do people pray to them? Why do people fight in the name of these heroes from novels?
Yes, there lived a good guy, Ram. There lived a badass guy named Ravana. There lived a fierce yet good guy named Narasima. People exaggerated their characteristics to make the novel interesting. We cannot make a deity out of every book we read!

Who is Harry Potter?
He is an awesome kid who learnt magic. He can fly on broomsticks, go invisible wearing a magical cloth. You can read more about him in the Harry Potter series of books. May be 2000 years later, people will make him Lord Harry Potter and celebrate his birthday!

My app has two models Genre and Movie. I want to search movies by Movie Title and Genre Name. The association between these two models is a "has many - belongs to" relationship and not a "has one"[1]

This is what my Movie model looks like:
class Movie < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :genre
  searchable do
    text :title
    text :genre do
       category.name
    end
  end
end
[1] - My previous post on the "has many" association
I've always been confused between the relationship between Movie and Genre while thinking of the basic CRUD app for movies or books. There are two options that my brain suggests me.

  1. Movie has one Genre
  2. Genre has many Movies
I think it's because of my colloquial dialect, that I had this confused in my head, Movie has a title. Movie has a story. And movie belongs to a genre. Hence, the relationship between Genre and Movie is clearly option 2.